In the shower I scrubbed myself clean, trying to rid my body of the filth from the night before. A mixture of cigarettes, alcohol, vomit, and the confusion of the night swirled in my head. I granted myself the pleasure of sitting at the base of the tub, letting the water beat down on me. The drops proved cathartic, allowing me to banish the images that cycled through my brain: that steady look in Vincent's eyes, him putting his hands all over me, the horror of my reflection, the patch, little men dancing on the tiles ... feeling duped somehow, foolish.

     Dizzy and weak, I felt the weight of my bones soar exponentially when I raised an arm or lifted a leg to dry off. As I climbed out of the tub, the lump in my throat slunk down into the pit of my stomach with dread (and fear) of what was to come. Jonnie had gotten me an appointment with a booker at Icon, her New York agency. His name was Clive Loreaux, "the man who's launched a thousand faces." If someone was going to make it happen for me, he was, she said.

     I laid out my go-see outfit, the skirt suit that I wore to visit my agent back home. It was tailored and conservative and offered me clean, straight lines. It projected the image of someone who had it all together—an image I certainly could use at the moment. But staring at the gray and charcoal pinstripes, it made me feel cheated, aged beyond my years. This wasn't the image I wanted to project here in a new city, where nobody knew me, and nobody expected anything from me.

     "Leave the blazer at home," Jonnie said. "Trust me, you won't need it."

***

     In the lobby of Icon, I looked out the window, watching taxis, busses, and ambulances roll by, observing all the commotion in the eerie silence of the glass office. A dreary day unfolded before me as a rain cloud descended on 32nd street. Passersby took shelter under awnings and covered bus stops. I fidgeted with my hair, twisting the ends round my finger, a nervous habit left over from when I was a kid. The elevator opened and a woman of Amazonian proportions emerged. In a New York minute (which I assumed is however long it takes for someone to give you the onceover), she pinned me to the wall with her beady eyes, checking my hair, skin, face, breasts, waist, hips, and legs just before brushing past me, her Rapunzel-length locks whipping across her back. Deciding get the rest of the harassment over with, I entered the waiting room and took my seat as Jonnie walked ahead to meet with an agent.

     It was a large, minimalist space, with bleachers for chairs and a cement slab floor. The walls sported framed magazine covers and posters of models dating back to the late '70s. Girls filtered in and out of the office carrying portfolios under their arms like badges of beauty.

     A model's portfolio, or "book"—as those in the biz casually referred to these pictorial shrines — is essentially her resume. Jonnie said that in New York a girl could show up to a go-see with puke in her hair from a drinking binge the night before, but if her pictures looked good, so did she. The selection of photographs in a model's portfolio, then, was absolutely critical to her success. Ideally, one's book included beauty shots of the face, body shots of the figure, and photographs of one's range, showing versatility. Some girls were perfect for commercial work, like catalogs and magazine ads. Others were "editorial" types, prime subjects of art-house magazines and haute couture clients. I guessed that I was more commercial, not exactly the edgy type, but I knew that to be a true success, I had to pull off both genres.

     "Catherine Watson?" a voice called, jolting me out of thought. I stood up.

     A tall, sleek Italian woman named Isabel with coarse, curly black hair and wiry black eyeglasses shook my hand and asked me to follow her. We walked into a conference room that overlooked Penn Station on 33rd Street. On the table were stacks of composite cards—the calling cards of the modeling world—dispersed in tiny stacks. I handed her mine.

     "6 feet tall, 34-24-34. Size 2?" She looked at me suspiciously.

     "Depending on the designer," I said, and the time of the month.

     "Brown hair, green eyes," she said, eyeing me. "You're a little pale, though. Not in a good way, either. You should get some color."

     She reached for my book and I quickly searched for an evacuation route. What a HUGE mistake. What are you thinking, Catherine, that your rinky-dink pictures could compete up here in the fashion mecca!?

     I tried not to make excuses as she skimmed the pictures. First page, a headshot of me in a fuchsia top, which I'd thought quite cleverly highlighted my fair, rosy complexion rather than drawing attention to my unstylish avoidance of the sun.

     "Your arm looks funny here," she pointed. "You should consider getting it airbrushed." I looked at the small crease in my upper arm. It was barely visible.

     Next page: "Too commercial."

     Page after that: "Consider pulling this."

     The subsequent page was a quarter-body shot. I wore a bikini top and a wrinkled peasant skirt. It was a black-and-white photo that my art-student cousin had taken over the summer at the Jersey shore. My hair was damp and curly from the salt water and fell loosely around my face. It was one of my favorite pictures because it was relaxed, not posed, and looked natural.

     "Amateurish," Isabel said. She flipped through the rest of my book with the enthusiasm of a housewife reading a circular in the checkout line.

     When she asked how old I was, and I told her, she said I was too old to be starting up in New York. "Most girls your age are already established before they come here," she said. "Why did you wait?"

     "Oh, I was in school ... just graduated, with honors," I said, smiling. Graduating at the top of my class had been a virtue I was quite proud of, but after seeing the vacant expression on Isabel's face, I quickly realized it wasn't a sought-out attribute here.

     "Wait right here," she said, grabbing my book and heading out of the room.

     On the table before me was a lookbook—a collection of models' headshots. Jon-Michelle was there, flanked by some hottie she did a leather jacket ad with in W magazine. She was just as breathtaking in print as she was in person. Her thick, dark brows rounded out a jaw line I'd thought only Brangelina's kids could inherit. Her eyes, pools of honey, illuminated her face at all hours of the day or night, regardless of how much sleep she had had the night before. Underneath her petite, but strong, nose lay two luscious mauve lips. Her skin was olive; hair, chestnut brown.In the photo, she smirked at the camera the way she always did, like she was holding onto a secret we mere mortals could never be privy to. Her allure, something she attributed to her exotic South American roots, was undeniable.

     I looked up to see the seductress standing before me, in the flesh. "Clive's coming," Jonnie said. "Don't let him spook you."

     Her agent, Clive, a middle-aged man who walked in relevés, entered the room. He approached me with the cadence of a cat before pouncing.

      "Honey," he said, shaking his head. "I've looked through your book, and I'm sorry but I just don't know what you have to offer us. We are an established agency, for established models, like Jonnie here, who has worked since she was 13...

      "Have you tried acting?"

     Jon-Michelle stood awkwardly in the doorway. "Clive," she offered, "how about she goes out with me, just for the day?"

      "I don't think so," he said, eyeing me curiously.

      "Well now, Clive, she is quite skinny. It might be wise to let Victoria or Agnes have a look at her," Isabel protested, with a sudden and inexplicable change of heart.

      "Victoria's in Italy preparing for fashion week," Clive hammered in staccato.

      "Well, Agnes then?" she persisted.

     I was being tossed around the room like a hot potato.

     Clive shot Isabel a look, with one of his perfectly arched eyebrows nearly jumping off his face to whip her into submission.

      "It's OK, really," I said, trying to appear unharmed by the assault to my ego. "I do have a list of agencies to see today. Thank you for your time."

      "Honey, you don't have to get defensive," Clive said, slowly peddling back onto his words. "You're just not really what our clients are looking for right now. It means nothing about you personally."

      "I understand," I said, caught in a moment where I wanted to dig a hole down through the center of the earth and crawl out in China.

     Isabel and Jonnie threw each other a sympathetic look that Clive intercepted.

      "I guess I'm out-numbered!" he yelled, throwing his hands in the air. "Have it your way, then. Let Agnes see her."

       Clive stormed out of the room.

      "Agnes is our runway booker," Isabel said. She flashed me a look of pity and walked outside.

     Great, now I was a charity case.

     Agnes was a plain woman of about 40, with a long, bony British nose and poker straight white hair. Like Clive and Isabel, she was cloaked in black.

      "Have you done runway?" she asked.

     Does the junior department at J.C. Penny's count? She pointed me out to a chaotic hallway, amidst gaggles of girls and bookers, chatting and yelling about casting calls and photo shoots. Once I appeared, the chatter ceased, and everyone gaped — no doubt waiting to see a wanna-be fall flat on her face.

     Agnes handed me a pair of strappy sandals to slip on. My heart raced as I wobbled slightly in the initial pacing. But my jumpy nerves forced me to walk briskly, my feet shooting forward, one in front of the other, as I shifted my hips from side to side. I neared the end of the stretch, stopped, lingered there for a moment and made as "fierce" a face as I could (á la Tyra Banks on Next Top Model), then turned quickly to return to my starting point.

     "Fine," Agnes said. "Come into my office."

     My heart leapt.

     She agreed to send me out for the week. The biannual Fashion Week shows were coming to New York in about a month, and go-sees were going on. Agnes made sure to let me know that this opportunity was just a one-time thing. But if I got booked for any of the shows, Icon would represent me.

     She motioned for my book, pulling out every picture but the first. "We don't have time to get you test shots, so just use this for now," she said. Then, she walked out to the copy machine, photocopied about 50 pictures of my headshot, took half the stack and placed it on a shelved wall of composite cards, and returned with a roll of stickers that said Icon, complete with phone number and address.

      "Place these on your headshots," she instructed.

      We walked out of the offices of Icon, and, surprising myself, I planted a giant kiss on Jonnie's cheek. Even though it was torrid, rainy day and thunderstorms had descended on the city by this time, I felt like in my little world — by some utter miracle — a perfect little bud had sprouted. And I would do all I could to nourish and protect it.

***

     Week one of go-sees in New York City went something like this:

     Hair?

     Wrong.

     Makeup?

     Wrong.

     Hips?

     Too big.

     Boobs?

     Too small.

     Walk?

     Too rigid.

     Smile?

     Crooked.

     I was too editorial, not editorial enough, too commercial, not commercial enough, too old to start in high fashion, too young for beer and cigarette ads. Would I consider escort work?

     The biographies of the girls I competed against went something like this: tearsheets from every major magazine; photo shoots in Japan, Italy, and France; hair commercials; reality show appearances; Miss America or Miss USA contestants; engagement rings the size of sailboats.

     And the hair? Perfect. Makeup? Flawless. Hips? What hips? Boobs? Victoria's Secret-worthy. Walk? Patented.

     Each starlet who straddled the runway was even more striking than the last. Transformed, it seemed, from the torn t-shirts, messy hair, and mismatched thrift-store pieces they shuffled in wearing earlier that day. I stood next to them in line, my dour pinstripes depressing everyone in the room, looking like I'd just stepped out of a horrible corporate training video from the '90s.

     At go-sees, while standing among these seven-feet tall glamazons, I shrank smaller and smaller, like Alice in Wonderland, until the Mad Hatter, wearing a pashmina and smoking a Parliament instead of a pipe, called out my name, took one long, sorry look and screeched, "Neeeeext!"

     By day five, Jonnie managed to avert yet another fashion tragedy by taking me shopping in SoHo. She wouldn't be seen with her "little Sis" on the subways anymore unless I kicked it up a notch ... or four. I was guided through the subtle nuances of fashion, which changed on an almost-hourly basis in New York. Pointy toe or round? Chunky heel or wedge? She knew. We picked out the must-haves of the season: cropped, black leather jackets; painted-on skinny jeans; shrunken baby tees; oversized Jackie O sunglasses; dangly earrings. I paid for it with birthday money and, oh, a small fortune I had saved up to pay for college textbooks (sayonara psychology 101!).

     Later, we hit her wardrobe, a feasting ground for the fashion addict made up of couture pieces, one-of-a-kinds, vintage dresses, and fashion freebies she had attained throughout her modeling career. Not having an older sister, I had been deprived of the sheer joy of pillaging the closet of someone older with better taste and more money. I slipped into one of her gems—a vintage Missoni jersey dress, circa 1970—and imagined her dark-skinned Colombian mother wearing it to a Bogotá country club, sipping pina coladas, as her children's nannies tended to them, poolside.

      "Wow, your mom must have been a diva," I said, running my hand along the dress' plunging neckline and chain-link belt that slung down around the hips. "But I don't think I have the cleavage for this." Strike that. I didn't have cleavage, period.

We were figuring out what to wear to an invite-only club Seth had asked us to, at a place where one of his friends was spinning records. Very New York underground, it seemed. Jonnie had been talking about the place all week. I was excited to go, but also a little nervous considering what happened my first night out in New York. Hopefully, this time I could keep creepy guys with fast-moving hands away from me.

I turned to show Jonnie the dress. "What do you think? I'm not sure I can pull it off. Your mother must have had an amazing body."

"She was a model too, you know." Jonnie said. "Did I ever tell you that?"

"No, how cool!" I said. "I wish my mother would have done something interesting like that. She never really had a career."

"Yah, well, I think my mother preferred her career to ... oh, I don't know.  She was just never very motherly, let's put it that way," she frowned at herself in the mirror, pulling a piece of lint off her dress. "And ... unfortunately ... my mom was never very successful as a model, either. I think that's why she wanted me to model so badly—sort of like to make up for it."

"Well, I'm sure you've made her proud," I said, trying to lighten the mood.

She smiled, "... yah, I guess. After my parents divorced, she remarried and moved to California. We only see each other like once a year, now."

She turned to me, "I'd give anything to be closer to her, like you are with your mom."

It surprised me to hear her say that. I'd been so embarrassed by my parents' constant pestering since I'd moved up there. On any given day I was fielding about five phone calls from my mother, who was even calling to see if I ate dinner and, to make sure I wasn't lying, what I'd had.

"Trust me, it gets old," I said, looking back at myself in the mirror, and realizing that I'd not even felt homesick for one minute since I'd gotten up there. Did that make me a terrible daughter? Or had I finally gotten what I'd been wanting for all along—a chance to start over, a redo, a refresh.

Jonnie reached over and pulled on the straps of my dress so the neckline came up higher. "There, I think that's better. Seth's gonna love you in this!"

"Stop! ... Really?" I asked, feeling a flutter of excitement.

Jonnie had known Seth for a while. She said he was quiet and sort of the mysterious type — like you didn't know if he was being aloof because he was shy, or because he had "secrets."  

"I think you'd make a cute couple," she said. "Him, the distraught, depressed-poet type, you, the perky, sweet, little suburban girl."

      "Don't get carried away," I said, pulling my hair up in the mirror, figuring out if it would look better up or down. "Plus, you don't even know if he likes me."

"Oh...believe me—I know!" she blurted, barely able to contain her excitement. "Theo told me. Seth thought you were cute ... said you reminded him of someone."

"Cute!? While puking my guts out!?" I said, now feeling the butterflies in my stomach go frantically wild.

     Taylor Swift's voice sprang from the other room, and I turned to get the phone, but Jonnie pulled on my shoulder while pinning up the straps of my dress. "Let it go," she said, assuming it was Ian, her on-again, off-again, who she was presently "off." Ian insisted on calling my phone when he couldn't reach Jonnie on hers.

     A few minutes later, we listened to the message on speakerphone, but it wasn't Ian:

     "Catherine? Hi, it's me ...just wanted to see how you were doing up there. Hope you're settling in."

     I stopped messing with my hair and paused to listen.

      "Hey, are you a famous model yet? Cause, ah, I thought I saw you on the cover of Cosmo the other day. Yeah, it sure looked like you. Well, I hope you're having fun up there. Call me when you get the chance. Bye."

"He sounds cute," Jonnie said. "Is that the guy you told me about?"

"That's the one."

"The one you dated?"

It occurred to me that I may have exaggerated a tad—or slightly more—when I told Jonnie about my relationship with Benji. It's not like we were serious boyfriend and girlfriend, at least, not in the way that Jonnie had had serious relationships (take, for example, the fact that Benji never brought me a diamond Tiffany tennis bracelet or paid for my European vacation).

Benji was, technically speaking, the first guy I sorta dated — if you didn't count dorky Lee Quigley, from church sleep-away camp, who used to kiss me in the dark during nighttime nature walks. Benji and I hooked up a bunch of times, but certainly never did it (because, of course, I was saving myself for THE ONE.) But this little truth wasn't exactly something I wanted to advertise around town—after all, Jonnie was a girl who had men (not boys, but full-grown, beard-sprouting, I-can-drink-legally-and-apply-for-a-mortgage men) crawling out of the woodwork to get a better glimpse of her.

I flipped through the pictures on my phone and found a slightly blurry but cute shot of Benji and I at the aquarium—the only shot of him acting normal that day and not trying to make himself look like a blowfish—and held it up to show her.

"He is cute!" she said. 

I couldn't disagree. Benji was cute in that nerdy sort of Clark Kent way. He was a prep who always wore crisp khakis with the center crease expertly ironed, and golf shirts that I imagined were stacked neatly in Gap-style tri-folds within every drawer. Even though he looked quite vanilla on the outside, beneath that veneer was a closeted goofball yearning for attention.

We'd met over the summer in the Old City section of Philadelphia. My parents had let me take the speedline into the city with my older cousin and her boyfriend to see an arthouse flick at the Ritz Theater. But after waiting for admission in the pouring rain and subsequently being turned away from a full house on opening night, we ducked into a warm, fiery pub that glowed from across the street, planning to wait out the storm. I remember smelling the cool musk of timber and rainwater. The old oak bar was stained with crescent-moon rings and worn down in places where patrons had etched their names into the soft, wet wood. We found a spot near the entrance and stood there, watching the rain pelt the passersby on 2nd Street, who were soaked but still looking for their Friday night fun.

     I walked down the length of the bar to find the restroom, weaving through a crowd of frat boys and thirtysomething women with double-processed hair and dangling cigarette ends, desperately trying to entangle some of the youth in their smoky aura, and noticed Benji. I stopped, or perhaps everything around me stopped, because I remember nothing of the noise, the women, the college boys, the music, the thunder outside. There was no sound, no commotion. Just him.

     He was telling a story. As he used his hands to talk, he made exaggerated gestures with his long fingers and opened his bright eyes wide enough to illicit an "ah-ha!" from the onlookers.

     When the audience burst into an avalanche of laughs, the look of gratification on his face made my chest cave and my heart beat erratically and, my God, my stomach flipped like a six year olds on Christmas morning. He looked startled, caught by my sudden interest, then quickly looked away. On the way back from the bathroom, I prepared myself to walk by him with a little more restraint. But he wasn't there. I quickly scanned the room, hoping I hadn't missed him leave, when I saw him talking to my cousin Aleta and her boyfriend, captivating them with his presence.

     Benji and I pretty much saw each other from that rainy June night on—his charm was undeniable. My mother loved how he would pick me up at the house, "like a gentleman," instead of casually meeting me at Starbucks or the mall. He would come by and bring his mother's baked breads, cookies, and his dad's bottles of wine for my father, which only added to their adoration. I did love all the attention ... at first. But after a while, it sorta started to scare me. Benji could be so serious and grown up about things.

     He was on the fast track and had his whole life planned out: Married by 30, a principalship by 35, two kids, two dogs, two-car garage. It scared me half-to-death.

      "What happens if your wife doesn't want kids?" I asked this overachiever one day, as we were sitting on benches along the Schuylkill River, after taking an early morning jog in Fairmount Park.

      "She will."

      "How do you know?"

      "Because I won't marry her if she doesn't."

      "Oh, yes, that makes things much easier. So you're willing to have your American dream at the expense of true love?"

     He looked at me strangely.

      "What are you talking about, Catherine?"

      "I mean, if you fall in love with a girl, and she doesn't want that typical life, then you'll just leave her?"

 It irritated me how Benji had it all figured out, like he was ready to step up for his prize for having mastered it all—the grown-up job, the five-year plan, the unwavering resolve—at barely 21. He would often look at me quizzically from across the table, wondering why his powers weren't working.

But, to me, following that traditional path meant being sucked into early adulthood to carry out a paint-by-numbers existence. And deep down, I think he secretly agreed. He had told me once, on a late-night phone call, that he'd wanted to be a filmmaker ever since seeing the Harry Potter movies as a kid. He'd even made a few shorts with his father's 18-millimeter camera. But when I pressed him about his career choice, he insisted that film was just a hobby, and, besides, he said, "What's the point in trying to make it in a career with such a high failure rate?" His words didn't sound too convincing, though. It was like he was mimicking what he'd heard someone else (his father?) say to him. That's why I'd been hesitant to tell Benji about my own aspirations.

     I snapped back from my day dream and noticed Jonnie was still looking over at me, impatiently, waiting for an answer. "Um, hello!" she said. "The guy? A boyfriend?"

"We sorta had this thing over the summer, but it's over now," I said, realizing that we were, in fact, better off as friends. That's the one thing I liked about Benji, he let me sorta take the lead with things and when I was starting to get freaked, he eased off on the boyfriend thing.

      "What does he do?" she asked, walking over to the full-length mirror to check out her ensemble, flash her trademark pout.

      "Well, he doesn't do anything quite yet. He's going to be a teacher."

      "A teacher?" she gasped. "Oh God, why would anybody want to teach?"

      "I don't know. I guess to help people," I said, feeling slightly annoyed by her shallowness. "He's that kind of a guy ... a Big Brother and all."

      "But do those people make any money? Like what do they make a year, 40,000 dollars?" She looked me up and down and handed me a lipstick. "Red lips look great with that dress."

      "Um ... I never really thought about it," I said, wondering what the big deal was.

      "Seriously, sweetie, if you're into the professional type, don't waste your time with a schoolteacher," she said. "Find a guy who works down in the financial district. Wall Street is crawling with those assholes, and they love models. They pull in like 200,000 dollars a year."

      "A year? That's waaay more than my dad makes, and he's been a public defender forever," I said in disbelief.

      "Yeah, most of these guys were the biggest geeks back in high school. Now that they're loaded and living in a penthouse in Tribeca, they'd do practically anything to get a beautiful girl to fuck them."

      "Jonnie!" I shrieked, slightly horrified by her language but also, I confess, a teeny-weeny bit thrilled by the prospect of men—successful men like that—clamoring over a girl like me. Catherine, the girl who, up until Lee Quigley came along, was practically invisible to those of the opposite sex.

      "It's true," Jonnie said, holding up the picture of Benji and shaking her head. "Just don't limit yourself, Catherine. You're in New York now. You'll have the pick of the litter."

   I grabbed my phone, staring down at the blurry picture of us for just a moment, before pressing "erase."

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